Another detail to come out of the release yesterday of a court filing in the case against Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow is that former Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who's now a state assemblymember, agreed to wear a wire for the FBI in order to record a conversation with Chow. As Matier & Ross report in the Chronicle, Chiu wore the wire to an event at a Chinatown restaurant where he was likely to run into Chow.
Chiu spoke to the Chronicle about that night, saying only that "it was not a pleasant conversation," and while he couldn't categorize the exchange as explicitly threatening, he adds, "There was nothing about it that made me think I shouldn’t have a security detail."
The conflict goes back to some city funding that Chiu pulled for a Chinatown Night Market after he became aware that Chow had taken over managing it, due to Chow's criminal ties. Chow then took out an ad in a Chinese language paper saying that Chiu was like "a corpse eating a vegetable dinner." Subsequently Chiu had a police detail with him at all times for six months.
Joe Eskanazi at SF Mag also contacted Chiu for comment yesterday, and Chiu explained that he surrendered the wire to the feds that same night in 2009, and hadn't been in contact with them since.
Since yesterday's publication of details from the filing by Chow's attorneys which is part of a motion to dismiss the case against him as one of prejudicial prosecution Mayor Lee's rep Tony Winnicker has responded to the allegations in the filing saying Lee “honestly doesn’t remember meeting these people" whom the filing says offered pay-to-play campaign donations through an intermediary.
The Associate Press also picked up the story, and 2015 mayoral campaign spokesman P.J. Johnston says, "While it appears others may have tried to engage or ensnare Mayor Lee and any number of other people in their own wrongdoing, there's absolutely nothing in today's filing by Raymond Chow's attorneys that suggests that Mayor Lee himself or his 2011 campaign did anything wrong or inappropriate."
